Tales from Astoria: St. Nicholas Day

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Friday keeps sneaking up on me! I missed last week's Quick Takes because we were so busy getting ready for our trip to MD. Charlie met his great aunts for the first time and got to see his grandparents house. He was such a good little traveller. He slept in the car both ways. It helped that we travelled at night and has practically no traffic! We made it door to door in 4 hours on the way back!

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We had a blast celebrating St. Nicholas day yesterday! I can't wait until Charlie is a little older and he can verbalize his excitement. However, his squeals when he was pulling things out of his bag were priceless. How did you and your family celebrate St. Nicholas day?

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This is a big "church" weekend! Tomorrow is a holy day of obligation, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Which means that you have to get to church tonight or tomorrow morning. The Saturday night vigil Mass does NOT count for both!

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We will have a special visitor this weekend who will be with us until Wednesday morning. We are so excited! We bought a tree early this morning and will decorate it later. The hubby and I are thinking of getting a small tree for Charlie so, we can put our ornaments up. I love going through the boxes and looking at the ornaments we have been given by different people. It is always fun to remember when/how we got them. As part of Charlie's St. Nicholas gift, he was given a little Santa ornament to put on the the tree.

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On Sunday, we will be participating in a craft fair at the school where I used to work. It will be nice to spend time with friends. I'm sharing a table with a great friend of mine so there will definitely be lots of chatting.

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Next week we have two opportunities to go to Christmas concerts so, hopefully we'll be able to make at least one! One of them we can definitely bring Charlie to...the other we might just show up and see what they say. He loves music and is usually pretty quiet.

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My little boy is asleep in my arms and he looks like an absolute angel!

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As a kid, we never celebrated St. Nicholas Day however, I always thought it was neat when my neighbors would tell me about how they put their shoes out and there were treats in them the next morning. In my years as high school teacher, the German teacher always celebrated with her students. She would ask them to bring in an extra shoe and leave it in her classroom overnight. Of course, there would be treats in their shoes in the morning. (I worked in a small Lutheran school therefore, this was manageable.) This year since we have our little one I thought it would be fun to incorporate the celebration of feast days into our Advent observance this year.

ST. NICHOLAS PRAYER

Loving God, we thank you for

the example of St Nicholas,

who fed the hungry,

brought hope to the imprisoned,

gave comfort to the lost,

and taught the truth to all.

May we strive to imitate him

by putting you first in all we do.

Give us the courage, love and strength

of St Nicholas, so that, like him,

we may serve you through loving